OPD’s “Less than Lethal” Lessons from Military Forces

The story of American law enforcement has always been that of once-private protection firms for 1% elites in search of a social mandate. Despite the obvious primary role that police have in protecting the property of the richest and most powerful, life in a democracy is tough for elite guards—they must grow and assume forms that the constituents of a democracy find gratifying. Diversification in the form of anti-crime campaigns has been priority one for law enforcement since J. Edgar Hoover first crawled from the muck.

On the local level, one such roll-out, the SWAT phenomenon set the predicate for today’s militarized police forces in the late sixties and seventies. Beginning as a militarized response to overblown fears of terror and hysteria about armed shooting sprees in Los Angeles, the SWAT meme spread and was easily turned toward the war on drugs and crime hysteria of the eighties and nineties. Increasingly, urban combat teams were sent out to America’s inner cities with the mandate to use arsenals of heavy weaponry and to abrogate constitutional protections of America’s citizens and residents. Militarized law enforcement was also directed at civilian assemblies, a natural turn reflecting the origin of policing. The participation of militarized police forces in Philadelphia’s MOVE atrocities, and regular tragedies in inner city neighborhoods, created a national discussion on non-lethal weaponry. Explosives and AK-47’s were replaced with chemical agents, tazers, flashbangs and various iterations of so-called “less than lethal” rounds in a move to reduce the obvious dangers of militarization in law enforcement.

While the move to “less than lethal” weapons might on the surface be seen as at least a minor step forward, the model that urban police forces have often followed in this new militarized era—US-funded Israeli policing of colonized areas in Palestine—has been troubling. Israeli occupation forces are, indeed, probably the worst example that any civilian police force could look to. In the first place, such forces are not militarized police forces like those that are increasingly problematic here; rather Israeli Border Police and the Israeli Defense Forces are military forces with policing functions. Thus, their goal is not to protect a civilian population from crime and violence and to enforce the law within legal protections for suspects– the entire population that they police is criminalized and there are few if any human rights protections for Palestinians in the occupied territories.

This narrative, unfortunately, is one that is easily absorbed into the American discourse on crime and violence, where geographic and institutional race and class barriers create ad hoc bantustans in which the policing of subject populations mirrors Israel’s policing of subject Palestinians. This superficial similarity based on racist perceptions and an ‘assault on civilization’ ethos, creates a natural partnership between US federal and local police structures and those of Israel.

American security structures are already saturated with an intelligence gathering and surveillance worldview that sees the citizen as a subject for control, continuing a long authoritarian streak that has had only brief pauses of oversight. But an ever tighter series of connections with Israeli intelligence and policing structures only further tilts this view. Idealogues and politicians call for the institution of airport security regimes from Israel, despite their known use of racial profiling. And Israel’s reputation for policing subject populations makes veterans of its security apparatus attractive candidates to manage unconstitutional surveillance of American activists by American leaders. The most notorious example, revealed recently, was that of a private consulting firm run by former Israeli intelligence officials, spying on anti-corporate activists at the behest of a corporation-captured Pennsylvania Governor.

The superficial evolutionary similarities have naturally created imagined bonds between militarized police forces at home and military policing forces abroad, reinforcing already institutionally racist perceptions of poor and of color communities—and by association, activists—where tactics and abuse of “less than lethal” weapons migrate to the American policing context. The possibility that veteran Scott Olsen was injured with a tear gas canister or other “less than lethal” ammunition becomes ever more distinct, in that light. Similar to the way that rubber bullets were misused by IDF forces in the past as often lethal—and at the least tools for disfigurement and maiming—the weaponization of tear gas canisters has become the new rage in Israeli human rights abuses.

By now there have been several incidents where extended range canisters, which are quite literally projectiles, have been used to maim and even kill. In the past few years, there have been several deaths and injuries, with high-speed tear gas canisters fired at the heads and torsos of Palestinian demonstrators. Mustafa Tamimi, shot in the face with a tear gas canister, died in December 2011. Earlier this week, a young Palestinian activist rallying in support of a hunger striking prisoner, was shot in the head with a tear gas canister and remains in intensive care as of this writing. The tactic, used over and over again in ways too similar to be coincidence, can only be seen as a form of terror, to intimidate anti-apartheid activists.

The connection also hits closer to home, however—and not simply because the tear gas is manufactured in the US, and paid for in both the US and Israel with American tax dollars. Tristan Anderson, a bay area resident and solidarity activist visiting Palestine, was struck and seriously injured by one such attack in Ni’lin by the Israeli Border Police in 2009. The attack came hours after a particularly effective demonstration against Israel’s nascent apartheid wall had wound down. Most activists had gone home, and there were only a handful left conversing, not protesting. Israeli Border Police shot several vollies of tear-gas at the handful of protesters and, in what seems like a targeted attack, shattered Tristan’s skull with a canister, causing brain damage which he still struggles with today.

In a cruel irony, a special attachment to the Israeli Border Police trained with the Oakland Police Department and other local law enforcement, just weeks before the OPD and others severely injured Olsen in a similar incident on October 25. In another remarkable irony, Bahrani security forces have also lethalized tear gas and tear gas canisters resulting in deaths during the past year of anti-government demonstrations. This relationship, where a civilian police force receives tips from military forces that have the exclusive aim of policing politically powerless populations [Bahrain is a monarchical dictatorship]—would have been shocking a decade ago. But given the inexorable progression of the police to military mindset, the fusion of roles proceeds without mainstream comment of any kind. The attendant infection of weaponized “less than lethal’ ammunition is not a surprise in this context, along with the kind of injuries one would expect from it.

At the heart of this outbreak of on-going militarization of American policing is the question of what the police are here to do. The history of western policing is punitive and in favor of the powerful—a human rights and constitutional discourse added community service aspects in the past decades, and toned down the violence to acceptable levels. The heart of policing, however, contains the same seed of the structure we live in. The police are a force to protect the powerful from the powerless. As that divide grows more pronounced in our current time, it’s no surprise that these same forces look backward to their origin, losing the brief veneer of human rights rhetoric, returning to their roots as paramilitary teams, with the goal of terrorizing dissidents by making examples out of those who resist.

Occupy Oakland and other groups will hold a rally, march and panel discussion on violent repression of Palestinian activism, starting at 4:00 at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, Tuesday March 13.

Isn’t it true that the number of terrorist attacks carried out inside Israel declined greatly after the so-called “apartheid wall” went up? Does that suggest that it was/is a legitimate security measure?

The number of of deaths of Israelis went down during Cast Lead, which killed 800 Palestinians. If ends justifies the means is your bag, you can do this all day, and go quite far back into history–including some iconic extermination regimes as well with this thinking.

The wall hasn’t killed anybody; on the contrary, it has saved lives. I would argue that it has saved many Palestinian lives as well as Israeli lives, as fewer attacks means fewer reprisals. One might argue that the wall prevented a Cast Lead in the West Bank. To call it an “apartheid wall” is, in my view, specious and misleading.

The wall has killed many Palestinians–that is, the presence has given Israeli soldiers a daily reason to be ever more involved in the daily lives of Palestinians, especially in the seam areas. Palestinians in the seam areas must apply for extra permits, simply to access THEIR OWN LAND–protesting this, or, heaven forbid, losing your shit over the daily humiliation of being watchd over by an armed thug to get to what’s yours, brings with it the risk of injury or death. I’m pretty sure I wrote about that in the body of this text. Your response is ludicrous, Gator. You wouldn’t tolerate the imposition of a wall in the middle of your house, or having to be extra nice to someone with an automatic weapon to get to your car port every day. If it helps think of it this way–the total deaths caused by Palestinians in Israel is about 700. The total number of PALESTINIAN CHILDREN ALONE killed by Israelis is twice that figure, or 1400. Boasting that no Israelis have been killed because of the wall is an ugly and immoral statement that I’m sure you’ll want to retract once you think about it in this context.

As I said, I think the wall has saved many Palestinian lives as well as Israeli ones. As problematic as the wall is, I still think it’s better than a continuing cycle of suicide bombings and retaliatory bloodletting. I’m unabashedly glad that the wall has protected Israeli civilians from being murdered, and I see nothing immoral about that. I’m also glad that Palestinian children in the West Bank have not been blown to bits by Israel in retaliation for attacks that would have occurred but for the wall.

If being glad that Israel isn’t bombing the West Bank is your idea of “Zionism,” so be it. You are entitled to your apparent belief that lethal hostilities, with Palestinians inevitably suffering more deaths, are preferable to the wall. Guess we’ll just have to disagree.

You must have been crazy for South African apartheid and American slavery. There is more to institutional violence than just the visceral image of dropping bombs, obviously. Is further economic and social fragmentation and oppression preferable to being incinerated by a cluster bomb? I guess. Not a very helpful place to put your argument unless your goal is to keep the whole thing out of sight, out of mind.

Jaime Omar,
I apologize for posting this as an off topic comment, but I couldn’t find an email address of yours to send it to, and I think this is important information to bring to your attention. I’ve long been impressed and appreciative of your writing, and I’m hoping that you’ll be inspired to write about or in other ways help bring attention to Occucards. The website will inform you of what you need to know. I think the concept is excellent, and the cards could be a boon to informing Occupiers and the general public as to ‘Why We Occupy’. Please take a look.http://www.occucards.com/
Thanks,
Kitt

End the War on Drugs. Call the less lethal weapons what they really are–“sometimes lethal”–and end the madness. Having RIOT cops (aka SWAT or Stormtroopers) showing up at peaceful events is nothing more than insane.